ANAHEIM -- Riley Greene insists his mind wasn’t on history as the Tigers kept hammering out hits off Angels closer Kenley Jansen, or as he stepped on deck while Spencer Torkelson stepped to the plate against Jake Eder.
Jansen entered the game in the top of the ninth inning with the contest tied up at 1-1, and Greene's solo leadoff homer put the Tigers ahead. Now Greene was about to hit again.
“I was just thinking, ‘Win the baseball game.’ That's about it,” Greene said after the Tigers’ 9-1 victory Friday night at Angel Stadium. “That was the only thing on my mind: Let's win this game.”
He had already accomplished what many kids dream about, stepping to the plate in the ninth inning and hitting a big home run. Now he had the chance to do it again, in the same ninth inning.
Few could have conceived of doing that. Nobody in AL/NL history had actually done it. Ever.
Greene wasn’t sure his first home run was going to leave the yard, evidenced by when he took off out of the box before it cleared the fence down the right-field line.
“I got it, but it didn't feel too good,” he said of the first homer. “I got out of the box because I needed to get on second or third.”
As he extended the Tigers' lead to 9-1 with a three-run homer when he connected with Jake Eder’s sweeper and sent it soaring into the California night, a Statcast-projected 409 feet to right-center, he had no such suspense.
“The second one felt a lot better,” Greene said.
Just two other Tigers had homered twice in any one inning. Greene had grown up watching Magglio Ordonez, who homered twice in the seventh inning against the Athletics on Aug. 12, 2007. Greene had gotten to meet Mr. Tiger, Hall of Famer Al Kaline, before he passed away in 2020. Kaline homered twice in the sixth inning as part of a three-homer game against the Kansas City A’s on April 17, 1955.
But while Greene is the 62nd AL/NL player to homer twice in one inning, he’s the first to do it in the ninth.
“Pretty cool,” he said.
It’s Greene’s second two-homer game in five days, having gone deep twice in Houston on Monday. He had two home runs for the season before this week and had endured a 1-for-32 stretch over a nine-game period last month.
Nobody doubted that Greene would hit his way out of a slump. He’s too good of a hitter, his work ethic and confidence too strong, to stay scuffling for long. Still, for over a week, he was grinding in search of a hit, any hit, in a game. Now he’s part of history with a two-homer inning.
“He’s made an All-Star team. He’s been a featured player on our team,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s been in the middle of the order. He gets all the toughest matchups. And he asks for more. You want guys to be rewarded whenever they work as hard as they do. Tonight was a huge night for him.”
The Tigers hit three homers in all off Jansen, the first time the potential future Hall of Famer has allowed that many in a game in his illustrious career. Colt Keith followed Greene’s first drive with an opposite-field shot to left-center for his second home run of the season. Four batters later, Javier Báez hit his third home run in as many days.
“[Michael] Brdar had us dialed [in], all of us, told us what to do,” Greene said. “Probably not going to tell you, because we don't want it to get out there. Brdar told us what to do and we trusted him, and it shows. He's incredible, and [all] our hitting coaches are incredible.”
By the time Greene’s spot came back around, the Tarik Skubal-José Soriano pitching duel that had shaped this game was unrecognizable. Tyler Owens, who flew across the country after being called up from Triple-A Toledo on Thursday and closed out that night’s 10-4 win, was back on the mound to finish this one.
The Tigers had pulled ahead late on Thursday, too, scoring eight runs in the eighth inning. This time, their eight-run ninth included history.
“It's cool,” Greene said, “but we have to show up tomorrow and try to win another baseball game.”